CSS Equal Columns Height script (v1.01)

Date: 11/02/2006 | By ddadmin | Comments: 209

A common pitfall of a CSS based columns layout is that the columns do not share a common height. Unlike a table based layout where the height of the table itself dictates the height of all of its columns, CSS columns are independent of one another in that respect. Now, this can be problematic (from a design standpoint) when you wish to style one of your CSS columns in a way that should extend all the way down to the end of the layout, such as giving a side column an explicit background color, a surrounding border etc.

This is a generic "CSS Equal Columns Height" script that will dynamically set the participating columns' heights to that of the tallest column's height, creating a uniform columns height layout. Use this script on any of our CSS Layouts for example. It's a matter of plug and play! To use this script, just insert this line of code into the HEAD section of your CSS layout page:

<script src="equalcolumns.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

As you can see, it references the external .js file "equalcolumns.js", which you should download (right click and select "Save As") and then upload to your own site.

This script is configured by default to automatically work with all of the layouts in our CSS Layouts section, whether 2 columns or 3 columns, fluid or fixed. Just add the script to the HEAD of any of these pages, and that's it!

If you wish to use this script to equalize the columns of your own custom CSS layout, open up "equalcolumns.js", and refer to the line:

Can anyone write the code for that. I know how to make each of the boxes, with the curve edges, that's no problem, but how to lay the whole thing out is my problem. Please let me know if you can write the code for this. Thanks.

Wow--this is perfect! and easier to use than the other scripts I found.

I'm still fairly new to css and couldn't figure out why I couldn't get my column heights to even out. I assumed there was something wrong with my css. Glad it wasn't my css, but too bad I wasted a lot of time trying to "fix" it!

Posted by Tracy on 04/19, 10:34 AM

it's like people don't see anymore. I said i need help writing a code for the CSS layout on this webpage:

http://gbarnett.pbwiki.com/f/css_layout_dimensions.png

Posted by 3trippleB on 04/19, 09:48 PM

In response to 3trippleB, use the contact form on my site to email me and I can help you.

This script solved my column issues beautifully. However in the desire to be accessible, our team has come up with a problem. When you use the Firefox zoom in key command, the text enlarges below the columns and into the background. The text is then unreadable. If you refresh the page, the script redraws the column to the correct height for the new, larger text. But I don't know how to trgger a page refresh when someone uses zoom.

I tried substituting the line of code (Posted by ddadmin on 11/20) to cause the script to run constantly, but it didn't solve the problem.